Entangled
by glyphsbowtie
Summary: Rey is an assassin and vigilante living in a dystopian city under the rule of Leader Snoke. For over ten years, she has been looking for the warlord Kylo Ren, the boy she fell for before he murdered her father. She is hired to find Ben Solo, and finds her destiny in an alleyway.
**Note
**

 _I'm sorry, I guess. I didn't flesh out my dystopia, I just liked this backdrop for these doomed lovers._  
 _Have fun!_

* * *

 **Now**

"Don't make me shoot you. This bullet is not meant for you." Rey's fingers are steady as she points the pistol at the cloaked figure walking away from her. It is a cold and wet night; she is soaked through. Still, there are worse places to be than in a narrow back alley. This is an easy job, all things considered.

He pauses. "Isn't it?" His voice is low, but she hears it clearly above the steady thudding of the rain.

"Ben, your mother sent me," Rey tells him honestly. "Lady Leia. She told me to tell you she has forgiven you. She wants you to come home."

He chuckles. "You don't know, do you?"

* * *

 **Then**

Rey shivers as she pulls the thin blanket around her. She can't sleep; she isn't used to the sounds of the city. Despite the late hour, there is still smoky jazz coming from the building next door, and the sound of artificial laughter coming from the women.

She is seventeen, and has spent her entire life before today in the junkyard outpost of Jakku. But now her father has insisted they come to the city, to this miserable apartment.

She slips from the bed and tiptoes across the small room to press her forehead against the smudged glass of the window. She closes her eyes, but it isn't dark. The silvery moonlight and glowing neon from across the street fill her head with light.

Until they don't.

Her eyes snap open and she is staring into the largest, most beautiful brown eyes she has ever seen.

She gasps and stumbles back, heart racing in her chest. The boy hanging from her sixth storey window ledge makes light work of sliding the window open and sliding in. She reaches for her knife and brandishes it.

He is about her age, but unnaturally tall. He's narrow everywhere, but there is a promise in his shoulders that one day he will be broad. A pair of goggles sits atop his glossy dark hair, which he wears long and loose. He is clothed in black leather, right down to his boots and his fingerless gloves.

Rey thinks that she falls in love with him the moment he curls his lip at her, very gently, revealing a flash of pointed white canine.

She wonders what she looks like to him. Her hair is loose down her back, framing a face she believes to be plain and unremarkable. She's thin, largely as a result of their poor diet back home, and she's wearing one of her father's old shirts. Oh, and of course, she's waving her knife in front of her.

Not that it's going to make much difference. The boy before her is armed to the teeth. A long sword is strapped to his back, and he has a dagger attached to one thigh. An antique brass pistol sits snugly in a holster at his hip.

"Why are you here?" When she finds her voice, it's trembling and breathy.

He takes this as an invitation to step towards her. "I'm not here for you. What is your name?" His voice is gravel, coarse and low.

"Rey." She knows she should fear him, but she is hynotised by his soft eyes.

He takes another step closer. He has made no motion to reach towards a weapon, and he is looking at her like she is a prize gem, rather than a scruffy scavenger. She tells herself this is why she allows him to wrap one hand around her wrist- there is the buttery softness of his glove and the shocking warmth of his fingertips- and pull it towards him, taking the knife in his other hand and tossing it aside.

"My name is Kylo Ren," he tells her.

She swallows. She has never been kissed before but she knows that he is about to kiss her. Those melting eyes flicker between her own gaze and her lips. His hand is still wrapped around her wrist. He is lovely- she can hardly believe that such a creature is real. The skin on his narrow face is pale and dotted with dark freckles. He is clean-shaven, but the beginnings of dark stubble linger on his angular jaw.

His other hand trails her face softly. One finger runs along her bottom lip, and her eyes flutter shut. He replaces his finger with his mouth, bending to kiss her firmly. He tastes of whiskey and smoke.

Rey has never been kissed before, and her response is instinctive; she reaches up to tangle her fingers in the surprisingly silky fall of his hair. Her lips work against his, and she tentatively trails her tongue along his bottom lip.

When he draws back from her, there is uncertainty in his eyes for the first time. The Adam's apple in his throat bobs up and down as he swallows, and he presses something into her hand.

"There is one bullet in it. It's for me, Rey- don't forget." He kisses the top of her head. "I'm sorry."

She is confused- she opens her mouth but he silences her with a finger over her lips, shaking his head.

"Stay here. No matter what you hear."

He is gone. He leaves her standing holding the antique brass pistol he pressed into her hand, the pistol he has told her he wants her to use to kill him.

What she hears is Kylo Ren murdering her father.

* * *

 **Now**

The cloaked man turns to her. Ben Solo. She has been hunting for him for weeks. To be fair, it has been a harder job than it should have been. Rey, now almost thirty, is an assassin. She is accustomed to finding people… and then murdering them. Lady Leia's job has been different, because the fearsome leader of the Resistance expects her son to be returned home alive.

"He left almost fifteen years ago," Leia had told her, as they sat drinking martinis in a grimy bar. Behind her, on a flickering television screen, the news was showing the daily firing squad execution. Rey remembers being reminded of the fact that the woman sat opposite her was fighting fiercely against Leader Snoke, despite the fact that it put her at incredible personal risk. "He went to Snoke. I'm not sure what became of him."

When Rey had started asking about Ben Solo, her contacts in the First Order had been less than helpful. Most have never heard the name. Not for a long time.

But Ben Solo himself apparently heard she was asking about him, and arranged to meet her. However, as soon as he saw her, he turned away. So now she is standing with her gun pointing at him.

"What don't I know?" Rey asks.

He lowers his hood. The face is scarred, the eyes colder. But it is him; it is Kylo Ren, the warlord she has been hunting for over a decade. Over the years, he has become prolific- the worst of the men employed by Leader Snoke to keep order in the city.

She has come close to finding him and confronting him more than once, but it has always been too dangerous to pursue him further. This is the first time they have seen each other in person since the night he murdered her father.

"Why are you here?" White hot rage swoops through her, burning her veins. She clenches her teeth and wraps her hand more firmly around the gun.

His smile is humourless, a flash of white canine making her swallow automatically. "I heard someone was looking for me."

"I'm looking for…" Rey trails off, helpless, as she realises. "Oh, fuck. You're Ben Solo."

"No longer. Tell my mother I have no desire to see her." His face darkens. "Tell her I regret what happened to my father."

Rey's heart is thundering. She is not prepared for this. But she knows what she has to do. "I have to kill you."

He steps towards her. Beneath the cloak, he is all in black leather, and heavily armed. But he doesn't reach for a weapon. He continues walking to her calmly, those brown eyes searing into her.

She could shoot him. She should shoot him. The gun he gave her all those years ago is lead in her hand.

When he wraps his hand around her wrist and pushes the gun down firmly, she does not resist.

"I wondered when I would see you again," he murmurs, and it sounds like a lover whispering sweet nothings into her ear.

She shivers, powerless for a long moment.

He lowers his mouth to her throat, his damp hair tickling the sensitive flesh there. The kiss he presses against her is hot. "Kill me," he whispers against her skin. "Kill me, Rey."

Rey is crying. His arms slide around her, holding her close, comforting her as she sobs. She is heartbroken; she isn't ready for this. He has been more than an obsession for her. Of course it was always going to end like this. But what will happen after?

He tips her face up to his and kisses her. He is hungry, desperate; she could let him devour her if she wanted. The kiss tastes of tears and regret. She tangles one hand in his long hair, holding him close, savouring the familiar taste of him.

Finally, she pulls back. "I love you," she breathes against his mouth, because it's probably been years since he heard those words. And they're true, in a way; Kylo Ren has shaped her entire existence. He has occupied every waking thought she has had for over ten years. Their destinies have been entangled. If this isn't love, what is?

His eyes widen. Whatever he expects to hear, a declaration of love isn't it. He opens his mouth.

She shoots him. The pistol shot is loud, and it is Rey who cries out, not Kylo Ren. He merely smiles, one hand going to his stomach. Rey lets the pistol clatter to the ground.

"Thank you," he says softly. He raises his hand to his face in wonder. It is coated in blood. In the strange twilight of the alley, it looks silver.

He falls to his knees before her. He looks up at her, and for a moment he is the boy who climbed in her bedroom window.

He is bleeding all over the ground.

Rey feels her heart break as he smiles up at her as though she is the most precious thing he has ever seen.

"Thank you," he repeats.

"Fuck," she cries suddenly, changing her mind. She is on her knees beside him, pushing his stupid cloak aside, trying to get at the wound.

"Rey," he soothes, trying to still her hands. "Don't."

"Shut up. Fuck." His leather vest is buckled in a way which is too complicated for her shaking fingers, and she takes her knife to it, tearing through the fabric.

He is still murmuring her name, but he falls back to the ground, almost spent.

She tears off her own jacket and then tears open her vest, stripping it off and balling it up. The black shirt he wears beneath the vest is saturated with blood and she takes her knife to that too, flinching at the wound she has inflicted on him.

So it is that Rey, fearsome assassin and vigilante, sits in her vest in the rain, pressing her own shirt to the bullet wound she has inflicted on her greatest enemy, the warlord Kylo Ren.

"Let me die," he breathes. Blood bubbles on his lips.

"Stop talking." It is too late and she knows it- she can't undo what she has done to him.

He smiles at her. His eyes are closed. "I love you, too," he tells her quietly.

"Fuck." She searches his pockets with one hand, aware of what she is searching for. She finds it- a small, smooth comms transmitter. Kylo Ren has lost consciousness, but she can see the faint rhythm of his heart in the column of his throat.

She presses the button and speaks clearly into the microphone. "My name is Rey. I've shot Kylo Ren. He's almost dead, and bleeding out. Find his location using this signal and get here as quickly as you can."

The voice on the other end begins asking desperate questions, but she knows that members of the First Order are already on their way. He has no better chance of survival.

She waits with him until she hears an engine and then the screech of brakes.


End file.
